LEEDS METROPOLITAN FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE DISCIPLINE: CONTEXTUAL STUDIES COORDINATOR: DOREEN BERNATH ESSAY OPTION 1 WORD COUNT: 1950 20/04/2014
CRISIS, NEW MEANINGS TO ARCHITECTURE
Pedro Alban Calmon
INTRODUCTION, ARCHITECTURE AS REALITY The ideal here goes beyond the mere comparison of projects and the analysis of the set of intentions (mainly towards history) that allowed the erection of those buildings in their respective cities and sites. It is mainly the realization of the many contradictions present between architecture as projection – a field of architects, governments and planners – and its reality – a domain of citizens, mass media, and complex relationships, often unpredictable. It is the perception of links and connections that, once the construction built feedback in a transformation of those societies in a wider sense. The cities, Athens and Greece, are chosen here by their link as “cities of history”. The role – Athens case is more of a distorted platonic image than a reality¹ – which both played as nests of their respective civilizations makes for a possible comparing of their present conditions, as well as the elaboration of their possible futures. From capitalism to socialism, democracy to dictatorship, economic stagnation to enormous growth, a symmetrical distancing of those cities could also be observed in the positions taken toward their historical symbols, and the role they’re expected to play in the shaping of the collective imaginaries. By taking as case studies CCTV (OMA) and the New Acropolis Museum (Bernard Tschumi Architects), this essay aims to study possible overlaps, between the pretentions of government and their respective public outcomes. Going through a range of references which derive from ANT sociology methodologies, architects writings, interviews, field visits (Athens) and very specific news about the sites, this brief text will present a panorama of the complex ways in which architecture is taken by the unplanned.
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ATHENS, CRISIS AS INTEGRATION The New Acropolis Museum, by Bernard Tschumi, besides being by itself a monument towards history, shows, in the specifics of its building process, the way in which Greek government leads an essay toward the maintaining of its historical ideals. The scale of “preserving” – in a kind of Platonism¹ – the ethereal images of an unpopulated paradise comes into conflict in this project. The site, discovered to possess archeological qualities in the beginning of construction period, added series of restraints to a project which role was already a historical one. The program, a place to exhibit sculptures of the Acropolis, gains here a diagrammatic, synthetic approach, in the form of a plinth positioned on the top of the building, with the same dimensions and orientation as the original piece, but in a completely different materiality. Like both Tschumi’s theory² and other of his buildings, the museum abuses the analogies between architecture and film making, by working with cuts, glances and movements that visually link museum, Parthenon and preserved site underneath in different sequences of observation. Despite not being the most polemic building, in its relationships with public and critics response at the time of its inauguration - issues involving pagans wish to keep the sculptures in its religiously deserved site were present, but not considerably affecting the Athenian population as a whole – the project becomes interesting (through the perspective of this text) in the context of the current economic crisis. As, presently, the Athenian urban space is decomposing (in security, maintaining…), there are increasingly frequent and greater disruptions of the social web.³ Conditions are, therefore, being created to expand the links between architecture and the city.
museum viewed from the parthenon
the greek pavilion at 2012 pavillion tried to trace the links being made by crisis
The context of gentrification - a common feature of the streets circulating these Guggenheim-like museums, with expensive restaurants, street musicians and gift shops – is presented all over the world as a boundary which divides; city experienced by tourists and by residents. This disjunction becomes visible, and therefore more stable, in the analysis of police routes, illegal graffiti presence, prices and the conditions in which public spaces are kept. Crisis is provoking a break of this stability in Athens, which them blurs these boundaries, in protests and vandalism that, besides occupying with a sense of aware, mark with a citizen use spaces which were for a long time working only as touristic scenarios. It is also, in a discrete manner, making conditions for a reformulation and even integration of new pieces in Greek’s symbolic dimension. Far from criticizing the political decisions moving this growing condition, our argument here, focusing on the unplanned possibilities being generated, would rather point that this situation is enabling the project and its surroundings something it would otherwise never be able to expect: a sense of belonging and integration with Athenians.
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Analogies between vandalism and artificial disasters4 allow us to realize how the symbolic dimension of buildings, a planned feature in the assembling of the social, is reinforced by graffiti and protests. As the damage represented in space is actually aims at political structures and the whole Greek nationality, the architecture which suffers from it is embedded with a meaning that exceeds the field. Crisis, in that sense, seems, in a side effect manner, to define, and accelerate, processes of identity that would otherwise be much longer.
city hall reactions to vandalism in most general tourist spots
The way Tschumi construction is affected by these conditions can, at least for now, only be speculated. Intense security doesn’t allow the actual building to be either actually attacked or occupied, controversially diminishing its ability to become a meaningful piece of Greek social constructions. Whether it’s in Brazil – where Niemeyer’s Congresso Nacional recently had its roof invaded in a world cup protest – or in Germany, where Berlin Wall was at the time an object of intense graffiti5, it is clear that symbol and violence are inherently linked and that. In order to acquire the first, Greek government must balance its priorities and rethink its objectives to embrace the chaotic nature of the latter. Fortunately, redoing history seems not to be enough. CCTV, GROWTH AS DISJUNCTION CCTV, from its very beginning, acts, or at least was expected to act, as a Symbol and a Mediator. Its program, a major, state owned, television station in a socialist dictatorship country which has been slowly opening itself to capitalism, plays a huge role in the definition of social aspects to Chinese and the world. Its form, which seems to change from different viewpoints, is considered – by some critics but not necessarily by the citizens – one of the best symbols of the 21st century. Thought to be, by some, OMA’s masterpiece - Koolhaas giving up 9/11 competition points also to an office belief – the project shows, in some interviews6 with both government and OMA members, a set of intentions completely symmetrical to those present in Athens. Forgetting history, as a symbolic role in the development of Chinese social conditions and instead replacing this imaginary space with a set of contemporary iconic buildings clearly is an enterprise being led by the current planning. Luckily for them (Chinese people), what has been observed is, at least in part, a failure. CCTV seems to be unimportant outside the paranoiac architecture world, with its polemics being limited mostly to futile discussions7. Its nearby context consists of a series of constructions of the same sort and presents itself disrupted from any broader reality of Beijing.
CCTV and iconic neighbor building
Again, what interest us here are not strictly architectural or political conditions. CCTV, with its response to a general crisis of the skyscraper typology, could raise a lot of questions on its own, just as the many consequences
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of Chinese economic growth. Nevertheless, that is not the focus of our essay. What becomes interesting here is how a mirrored situation to that of Athens can raise, in some points, questions and answers which bring us to a common ground: that of crisis and as means of restructuring and generating meaning. In that sense, after realizing most general conditions of the case as not genuinely important (to our perspective), a narrowing of our case study proves to be useful. Due to Chinese repressive system and its free media restraints, violence, as planned attacks or damages is hard to track. Our study them is restrained to different kinds of “violence” which still work within a field of the unexpected, and change relationships of the building. The fire which happened nearby, and damaged part of the project, becomes thus an interesting object of analysis. Despite its random nature, as it wasn’t the object of a planned human action, the fire presents itself as one of the only meaningful happenings in the broader social network of CCTV. Because of both world attention and Chinese media emphasis in the construction, the fire was in a scale of context which could not be hidden. As a result, CCTV (the channel) had to pronounce, something very unusual, an apology letter. The presence of admitted guilt in a system known by its 1984-esque characteristics, is, more than uncommon, a feature which links (or at least could link) the building to the new images of a Chinese media. Freedom and coherence would gain, by unplanned means, a built icon. What is achieved by this particular situation could never be developed by traditional means of planned projects. Crisis, even in China, proves to be strongly linked with change, and more importantly, it cannot be controlled objectively. If CCTV, or any of these new Chinese constructions hopes to develop any important, contemporary meaning, it will only be through a medium that (not by planned intentions) Athens is currently involved with. Crisis, be it political or economic, is the most efficient way to produce and rewrite icons. Whether forgetting or reassuring history, symbol, as a social dimension, will only be obtained in the dynamism that it lacks with. For Beijing, if it aims to rethink its reality, a historic strategy is crucial. Culture as an import may work, but only as it is absorbed in terms of extreme identity. The new role that should be developed by history, in that sense, would be a kind of mixture, between local and global identities, that can only bind together by the means of crisis. The Tiananmen Square , a soviet import that has its symbolic power maximized by the violent events of 89’s Massacre, comes as an example, obviously not to be repeated, of a condition that tends to be ever more common in our future, and thus must be studied.
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LIBERTY AND CRISIS, NEW HOPES FOR ARCHITECTURE Architecture and the Social have in common the fact of shaping and being shaped by constructions external to its fields. By means and conditions which differ radically from one another, Beijing and Athens, once studied, indicate a general flaw from many governments around the world: the platonic belief in a social and historic dimension as an object which can be fully designed. This positivist error is currently becoming more and more present, as the “Guggenheim effect” takes over the world with promises of restructuring and renewing imaginaries. A general refuse of architecture as planning is not possible for, however far we try to get from the roots of modernism, the act of design will always be one of projection. What is needed for us them is a rethink the means by which the planned and chaotic can overlap. Crisis, a constant global condition, must be embraced and studied, not as a problem to be avoided but as one possible solution. 2014’s Venice Biennale theme, with its focus on history and unpredictable events rather than on the new possibilities of contemporary projects is hopefully leading us to these new priorities and perceptions. As for China, Greece and the perceived essays which have been leaded in their capitals, a common feature shall drive of a redrafting in the projects. Liberty, with all the contradictions it has with the concept of govern, will be the only way to achieve what seems to be the main reason of those plans: the assemble of new meanings in societies and their relationship with the contemporary cities. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5 6. 7.
As Maria Theodorou points out, the whole idea of preservation in athens is actually a platonic, empty of people and real uses, space, which is derived from an ideal much altered from the past reality Tschumi, Bernard. (1976-1981) The Manhattan Transcripts and (1996) Architecture and Disjunction The Greek pavillion’s focus on the changes given by the means of crisis have a strong link with this essay and the kind of studies it claims to expect from architecture. Stoppani, Teresa (2012). “The Architecture of the disaster”, Space and Culture. Koolhas annalysis, as a AA project, of the wall is focused mainly on the huge materiality of the construction as the means of its importance, but the number of people who interacted daily with the piece (diying in the east and writing on it in the west) are also means which altered its symbolic scale. “Ole Scheeren, who, along with Koolhaas, is an OMA partner in charge of the project, asserts that Beijing lacks a strong contemporary icon, identifying itself instead with the visually elusive Forbidden City”. the discussion about erotism in the building could only be generated in the least meaningful enviroment possible.
IMAGE REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5
Image taken by author Karissa,R. Venice Biennale 2012: Greek Pavilion, Archidaily.com, August, 03, 2012. Image taken by author Iwan Baan.” CCTV Headquarters by OMA”, Dezeen, May, 16, 2012. An.” CCTV tower under fire once again” http://www.xinhuanet.com, September, 26, 2009.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Theodorou, Maria. (2000). “Athens 2000: Forensic spacescape”, Archis, pp. 68-77. Tschumi, Bernard. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press. Stoppani, Teresa (2012). “The Architecture of the disaster”, Space and Culture. Koolhas, Rem. Mau, Bruce. (1998). S,M,L,XL, Monacelli Press. Latour, Bruno.(2007). Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to the Actor-network Theory. Oxford. An.” CCTV tower under fire once again” http://www.xinhuanet.com, September, 26, 2009. Karissa,R. Venice Biennale 2012: Greek Pavilion, Archidaily.com, August, 03, 2012. Said,E. (1978). Orientalism, Vintage Books. Amelar, Sarah,” CCTV HEADQUARTERS: Rem Koolhaas reimagines the skyscraper and a Chinese network in the process”, March, 2004, Architectural Record Vol. 192 Issue 3, p108.
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